Wednesday, August 03, 2005

Who's Screening Who?

I'd like to take you, take you to the ceremonyWell, that is if I remember the wayJack and Jill, they're going to join their miseryI'm afraid it's time for everyone to pray - Leonard Cohen

A common argument against accounts of abduction seems to amount to Why don't they take me? (Stephen Hawking has written something very close to this.) Or if not me, then someone I regard as a meritorous representative of humanity. (Larry King, a few weeks ago, during a rare break from missing-girl-in-Aruba coverage: "Why don't they abduct someone like...Colin Powell? Just kiddin' ya - we'll be right back.")

This argument from counter-anecdote - if it didn't happen to me, it didn't happen - holds several false assumptions: that abductees are predominately backwoods simpletons; that the abduction phenomenon must be about alien science; and that entities sufficiently weird to conduct such abductions would place extraordinary value upon those we consider extraordinary.

While there's no evidence of extraordinary value, there is at least one Nobel Laureate who describes a bizarre series of encounters and missing times episodes suggestive of abduction events.

American biochemist Dr Kary Mullis was awarded the Nobel in 1993 for his discovery ten years earlier of the polymerase chain reaction (PCR), which provided a method for genetic researchers to make copies of strands of DNA.

Mullis, left, receiving the Nobel Prize in Chemistry

One Friday night in 1985, Mullis drove to his cabin in northern California and arrived about midnight. He dropped off his groceries, turned on the solar-powered lights, grabbed a flashlight and headed for the outhouse, about 50 feet away.

In his book Dancing Naked in the Mind Field, Mullis describes what next happened:

[A]t the far end of the path under a fir tree, there was something glowing. I pointed my flashlight at it anyhow. It only made it whiter where the beam landed. It seemed to be a raccoon. I wasn't frightened. Later, I wondered if it could have been a hologram, projected from God knows where.

The next thing I remember, it was early in the morning. I was walking along a road uphill from my house.

Six hours were missing. As was his flashlight, which was never recovered. His groceries were where he'd left them, and the cabin light was still on. He discovered later that day that "the most beautiful part of my woods" had irrationally become a place of deep dread. As far as I know, Mullis has not attempted to recover the missing time through hypnosis.

And it's not only Mullis who has experienced strange phenomena at his cabin. Some time later, and before having told anyone of his encounter and missing time, his daughter Louise lost three hours wandering down the same hill, reappearing in the same spot just as her distraught boyfriend was about to call the police. And to Bill Chalker, author of the recently published, and fascinating, Hair of the Alien (which recounts the first forensic DNA analysis of a purportedly alien artifact), Mullis said that a guest at a party to celebrate his Nobel win in 1993, unfamiliar with his account of the "raccoon," encountered a "small glowing man" on a hill leading to the cabin. The figure suddenly expanded to full size and said "I'll see you tomorrow." He left the party with a friend for their hotel rooms in a nearby town. Very early the next morning he found himself outside in the hotel parking lot, "terrified by the impression that he had somehow been back" to the cabin.

Mullis tells Chalker that he considers the nature of the experiences to be stranger than extraterrestrial, and speculates that multidimensional physics, of the nature popularized by physicist Michio Kaku in Hyperspace and Parallel Worlds, is closer to the truth: "It's like anything can goddamn happen and the speed of light is not really the limit in terms of interactions with other cultures."

Mullis again, from Dancing in the Mind Field:

I wouldn't try to publish a scientific paper about these things, because I can't do any experiments. I can't make glowing raccoons appear. I can't buy them from a scientific supply house to study. I can't cause myself to be lost again for several hours. But I don't deny what happened. It's what science calls anecdotal, because it only happened in a way that you can't reproduce. But it happened.

But what happened? The talking raccoon has the earmark of an absurd screen memory to mask the authentic event. So: who was behind the screen?

We'll likely never know who was behind this particular screen, or the small, glowing man of Mullis's friend. As far as Mullis is concerned, he appears content to keep it that way. But the note of the vanished flashlight is a detail suggestive of a trip to Magonia, and the folkloric tradition of entities stealing small possessions of those they encounter. But not all screens mask the same Other.

This is one of those places of great divide between those already marginalized by consensus reality: survivors who have suffered either abduction or ritual abuse and mind control. And again, the argument is often from anecdote, invalidating another's experience because it does not conform to the parameters of one's own.

But the abduction phenomenon is too global, too diverse and too weird for it all to be ascribed to human agency, even agencies with sinister and out-of-control aspects such as the CIA, the NSA and others. There is just too much of it, and there has been for too long, to say it all goes back to our spooks. Though it does seem to be a complicated dance. The inhuman and the human transgressors appear to provide cover for one another, establishing each other's alibi. And this is easy to accomplish, because they are engaged in sympathetic and complementary enterprises, in the sense that both projects are physical and spiritual violations of human subjects. By forcing their will upon the minds of innocents, both are black workings of a sort, and both are able to operate freely because they share the self-negating characteristic of absurdity.

We're told to pay no regard to the man behind the curtain. Sometimes, we may find it's not a man.

By the way, thanks to Albion for the reminder of the 25th anniversary of Gladio's bombing of the Bologna train station. It's interesting to see Gladio's old hand Michael Ledeen push hard for imminent war with Iran in his August 1st column: "In coming days and weeks, we will see whether the mullahs will prevail against us." Raise the false flag, Ledeen; let's see who salutes it this time.

Well, I do think that drugs like LSD have an effect that extends long beyond the actual "trip" but who knows? As an old UFO buff who has read John Keel and Jacque Vallee I do not deny the possiblity of anything. I remember the story of Jeff the Talking Mongoose: the psychic researcher who investigated the case admitted that the simplest hypothesis that explained all the facts of the case was that Jeff was a mongoose who learned to talk, but he could not bring himself to accept the idea.

as much as it's psychologically convenient to locate occult phenom among the 'backwoods simpletons', i think too there is a layer of envy to the disbelief: why don't they take me, am i not good enough? do i not make the cut for the rapture? (not the literal rapture of course, but that subconscious wish to be counted as special or at least be privy to special knowledge.) even to those who thrive in the mundane and temporal, the neurotically rational, life can be so... tedious.

This is so fascinating and so reminiscent of Whitley Streiber's experiences. Have you read lately of Whitley's musings on his abduction experiences in his latest journal entry? I'd be interested in your take on it, Jeff. It's here:http://www.unknowncountry.com/journal/

Mullis adds the detail that when he found himself walking on the road the next morning his clothes were dry, despite an extensive morning dew. And the unreasonable dread he felt later that day associated with his formerly favourite spot suggests something dreadful occurred there the night before, the memory of which is suppressed. But that's about as much as I can say: that his experience is suggestive of abduction.

Deut. 18.9-14¶ When thou art come into the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee, thou shalt not learn to do after the abominations of those nations. There shall not be found among you any one that maketh his son or his daughter to pass through the fire, or that useth divination, or an observer of times, or an enchanter, or a witch, or a charmer, or a consulter with familiar spirits, or a wizard, or a necromancer. For all that do these things are an abomination unto the LORD: and because of these abominations the LORD thy God doth drive them out from before thee. Thou shalt be perfect with the LORD thy God. For these nations, which thou shalt possess, hearkened unto observers of times, and unto diviners: but as for thee, the LORD thy God hath not suffered thee so to do.

Isaiah 8:19-20And when they shall say unto you, Seek unto them that have familiar spirits, and unto wizards that peep and that mutter: should not a people seek unto their God? for the living to the dead? To the law and to the testimony: if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them.

If a married man dies without children, his brother shall marry the widow. If he refuses to marry his brother's widow or deliberately does not give her children, he shall pay a fine of one shoe. (Gen.38:6-10; Deut 25:5-10)

Streiber and many others speak of animals as a "screen memory" during abduction phenomenon. It's been a while since I've read "Communion", but I believe Whitley saw the "grays" as owls and sometimes wolves in these false memories. It is possible that Mullis was keying in on the eyes (many do, and call them mesmerizing and "soulless") of the being. The dark circles around raccoon eyes, here, representing the large almond shaped eyes of a "gray". As to why they don't abduct presidents, heads of state, mucky-mucks...A) most of abduction phenomenon’s primary focus is collecting genetic material from individuals. In this case, you don't have to be brilliant or powerful to posses whatever these beings require...B) I always wondered why doctorates in political science aren't elected officials, or Professors of history, etc. These are our experts in such fields, yet so few are in public service. As we indicate here at RI, many of these politicians and scientists have been corrupted already and only represent views of the establishment...ok, thats real convoluted, what I mean is-what we consider extraordinary, may not be what these "beings" see extraordinary. On another note, it is my firm belief that the human mind - in its current paradigm/worldview - is simply not equipped or capable of interacting with and/or remembering "aliens" in a cogent and cohesive manner. All humans believe they are the top of the food chain, the sine qua non of beings. It is too disturbing to find out otherwise. It would seem that some people are interacting with aliens or multi-dimensional beings. The jumbled recording the mind makes during such interactions is the minds defense mechanism against "impossible" occurrences. Though you may have never seen a grizzly bear up close in person, it is not outside of your worldview that you might bump into one, and if so, it would be easily recognizable as to what it is. A four foot, all gray being with almond shaped eyes standing a the foot of your bed in the middle of the night?! Forgettaboutit! Again, it is a hypothesis...Thanks all.

Glad to see you mention Kary Mullis, Jeff. Since reading his book in 1998 I have given several copies away to friends.Mullis has other views which the scientific community doesn't share. He firmly believes that HIV does NOT cause AIDS. He believes in astrology (see his chapter "I am a capricorn"). He experimented with many different drugs, says each time one drug was made illegal he and his chemist friends would make up something else to try. One really interesting story involved the use of some psycho active substance (can't remember the name)that he and a friend used. Mullis said that the substance enabled he and his friend to know what the other was thinking before they spoke.He also relates about the discovery process he went through for PCR, a kind of aha!, flash of insight experience.He's an incredibly intelligent individual, a very independent thinker. I wonder why we don't hear more from him. Maybe he feels safer not talking.

Actually, I just dug up my copy. The incident the last writer was referring to was without psychoactives, if my quick reread was accurate. The friend asked him to look into his eyes and continue to. And what should happen? The friends face starts shifting into other faces and even nonhuman faces, all the while remaining the face of his friend. Then the psychic connection came, and because they are scientists, as they realized the connection, they did a test, each writing down the next word they would say...and the words matched.

Another incident is interesting. Mullis huffed some nitrous out of his personal little tank (!) after taking an antihistamine (he's quite open about his drug experiments). Rather stupid, as he fell asleep with the gas still running and literally froze half his face. It wasn't clear why he had awakened at all while the gas was still on or how the tube he was using had gotten placed far enough away to mitigate the damage.

Then sometime later a woman he'd never met makes eye contact with him at a coffee shop or somewhere..comes to his table and they end up heading to his house making love after barely speaking. Happens to me all the time...ahem.

Anyway, he really felt she was somehow "in his mind"..."tickling his hypothalamus, " I think he put it.

She said, "you can learn this" and proceeded to talk about him as if she knew him, including the nitrous accident. How did she know about that? She claimed that she'd been astral projecting and had found him in distress. Knowing he was to be important to her, she moved the hose (never heard of astral bodies doing that...)

He freaks out about all this but then she says she'll teach him how. They meet some number of times but then she says she's got a big situation to deal with and she cuts him off. Turns out she had cancer and two weeks after she met with him to inform him of this (and to try to score some interferon, which he couldn't get for her) he receives a call that she's dead.

The author of "Confessions of an Economic Hit Man" also had dealings with a mysterious female mentor - a beauty with green eyes, it goes without saying - who up and disappeared one day. The first half of the book reads almost like a Castaneda story (I haven't got to the second half). Yet, it does jibe with what other World Bank reps have reported of their antics from that time period.

LSD and other hallucinogens primarily remove the mind's ability to filter out extraneous stimuli, subtle and overt. Remove the filters and you remove the walls, the defenses against the strange and frightening, boundaries against other people. Welcome to the strangeness.

This business of what happens during an abduction being so strange we just don't have the tools to remember it ... we all experience this, night after night. try remembering a dream sequence clearly, in conscious order, and holding on to it ... what if sleep is really a portal, or a glimpse of one, into the multiverse we're talking about here? An old idea, better expressed elsewhere, but worth repearting. We don't go extra-terrestrial when we're dreaming, we go multi-dimensional ... talking racoons in a dream? Nothing weird about that.

Kary Mullis opened the astral door in taking LSD, nitrous oxide, and any other hallucinogen; Whitley Strieber did the same by undergoing hypnosis. Both means of opening the door to the astral world are surefire ways to let the demons come in as one steps out of the body. An even more surefire way is to perform ritual magic, a fact too oft forgotten in the discussions here at RI.

Jeff, your comment about the cloak of absurdity employed by the demons is critical, and worthy of extended discussion, I think. The cracks in the Wall between the physical and subtle worlds are only growing wider (virtual reality technologies and our somnambulant embrace of the virtual over the actual having replaced drugs as the main agent responsible for this), and the absurdities are bound to magnify. That's why we so desparately need to work out a new Daemonologie, since Nobel laureates and UFOlogists simply suffer the cracks, and don't have the epistemological tools necessary to patch them so that we can get down to the pressing task of _becoming_ angels, rather than beckoning demons we mistake for angels. . .

I was in a new truck I had bought a few weeks before following a friend to his house one March afternoon around 5 pm. I say 'following' but I had been there many times before, I wasn't literally dependent on following him, but I was several blocks behind him while keeping him in sight.

I turned off a main artery onto a small stretch of expressway. There was only one way you could turn, I did make a wrong turn. I was going to correct direction to feed onto the expwy. The entry ramp had a 90 degree blind turn. As I came around it, there were 3 cars ahead of me waiting to merge onto the expwy, and one car length between me and the third car in line. The thought passed through my mind that if I had been going faster, I might not have had time to stop, and that since my new truck was much smaller than the old behemoth I had before I needed to be careful not to let my speed go up without noticing it.

Next thing, as in literally next thing--I had no sense of any time having passed--I was driving along and had NO idea where I was. None. I didn’t panic because I was in fairly heavy traffic but I looked around trying to place where I was. I realized I was on the expwy I had been waiting to merge on...but maybe a quarter mile away from where I had been AND GOING THE OPPOSITE WAY.

After the next intersection I turned around in a parking lot and came back going the way I should have been, and got to my friend’s house. I asked him how much time had passed since he got there. He said a couple of minutes. I asked if he had begun to wonder what happened to me, why I wasn’t there. He said no.

I told him what had happened. He said ‘obviously’ I got on the ramp going the wrong way. I told him I most certainly did not, I was waiting, completely stopped, fourth car in line, to merge going the correct way, then instantaneously I was in the process of driving the opposite way. He said maybe I was daydreaming and went into one of those ‘driving trances’ people go into where they are on autopilot. I said I was far from on autopilot, I had just been thinking quite clearly that if I’d been going faster I might not have had time to stop before hitting the car in front of me. I also said that I would have had to go from that state of alertness into a ‘trance’, waited while 3 other cars merged into rush hour traffic, merged into it myself, crossed two lanes of busy traffic, waited for a light to do a U turn, gone back UNDER the overpass I came from, UNDER the parallel railroad overpass, PAST an exit I used to take all the time when I worked nearby--all without registering having done/seen any of this. And then ‘come to’ a few blocks from the intersection, totally disoriented.

He said I’d been under a lot of stress lately, maybe I had a blackout. I said I’d had DOZENS of experiences in my life more stressful than the current situation and NEVER had a blackout (I should say here I was sober, don’t drink, don’t do street drugs, was on no prescription drugs except thyroid supplement I’ve been on since 1982 without side effects, and have never done ANY hallucinogens.) So he went back to the ‘took the wrong turn’ hypothesis and said he’d ‘prove’ to me I just got on a loop that took me the wrong way. (Don’t ask me how he explained my having been in a queue to merge EASTbound after accidentally going WESTbound.)

To make a long story short, we went back to recreate the experience, and to his immense frustration, it was IMPOSSIBLE to do what he said I did. You couldn’t ‘get there from here.’ So we were back to I was in a ‘driving trance’. I pointed out that when people go into those trances they usually follow a well known route. Why when I had been to his house many times would I go in a trance and turn COMPLETELY AROUND?

Well, he didn’t know, but he knew there ‘had to be a reasonable explanation.’

A few nights later I told some friends who were not agnostic lawyers like my friend what happened. One immediately said “Angels saved you!” The other said “Aliens saved you!”

Now, it had already occurred to me that if I had just enough room to stop coming around that curve when there were 3 cars waiting, once I made a 4 car queue, the NEXT person to come around that 90 degree blind curve, if speeding, might well have hit me and pushed me into the car in front of me, which would have hit the one in front of it and so on.

Removing my truck RIGHT before the next person came gave them time to stop and prevented a 5 car accident...and possibly more if there were other cars close behind the 5th car.

As for putting me down, a truck suddenly appearing on the eastbound expressway would have been noticeable, to put it mildly. Putting me down just after the 2 overpasses and turnoff would make it appear I was part of the westbound traffic.

It all makes more sense to me than the only two other hypotheses, the ‘trance’ or the ‘blackout.’

But...who lifted up a pickup truck and set it down? who blanked my mind so I had no memory of it, yet was immediately alert once it was over (if I had panicked and started driving erratically I could have caused an accident anyway)?

It’s obvious why angels would intervene...to save 5 or more people from injury. It’s also obvious logistically why my truck was the one to be moved. Aliens is questionable not on the grounds of whether there are aliens--I don’t know--but why they’d care about a car accident when accidents happen all the time. (I realize the same argument can be made about angels...why did they intervene in THIS near-miss situation when they generally either don’t intervene, or intervene in response to fervent prayers? None of us in the vehicles knew an accident was imminent, it’s not like we were asking for strength to lift a truck off Aunt Sally like the TV specials show.

Me again...please note that my puzzlement about angel or alien intervention does not have to do with HOW they did it--if angels and/or aliens exist, they have powers we can't explain with conventional physics--so much as WHY? If angels can pull something like this off why didn't they move entire trainloads of Jews from the railway into Auschwitz to a commuter train in Philadelphia, and save hundreds of lives? Why didn't they knock the two planes that hit the WTC off course? Why didn't they take human form and run around beaches yelling "Tsunami, run!"

Perhaps this sounds ungrateful--it's not. I might have been killed or left crippled, brain damaged, etc., if I'd been hit from behind and pushed into the car in front of me. But...no one deserves such fates, why was I spared when others are not? Or was it someone else's guardian angel at work, not mine, and I was saved inadvertently? That just pushes the question onto why the other person rated the unusual emergency rescue.

Cassandra -- I can't speak to what actually happened to you, but I can say that there often seems to be a principle of concealment at work in anomalous events.

Charles Fort regularly alluded to this quality in the phenomema he was studying. What it means in practice is that there is no event so miraculous that it can't be explained rationally. Sometimes the rational explanation will be very strained and full of unlikely coincidences, but there will always be one.

There are a couple of different ways of taking this. If you are a rationalist, of course, you are going to believe that not only is there is always a rational explanation for everything, but the universe itself is ultimately rational in nature.

But if you come at it from the occult direction, it is far simpler to accept that the other world which at times intersects with ours has a fixed habit of camouflaging itself so effectively that only those with the eyes to see will recognize its operations.

As the saying goes, "The secret protects itself."

Because of this Fortean quality of everything blending into everything else, it can be impossible in any given case to know whether what you've experienced is something quite ordinary, something rare but explicable, or something entirely extraordinary. Perhaps the best you can do is to accept the explanation that makes most sense in terms of your own life-path and follow it.

However, there may be a position even beyond that -- though I don't claim to have achieved it myself -- where you manage to perch precisely on the razor's edge between belief and disbelief. I've seen suggestions in mystical writings that this is the true point of enlightenment.

I would say that prior to this experience I was perched exactly on that edge. When I was 22 I saw a former co-worker and we waved to each other though we didn't speak. However, when I told someone else who knew him about seeing him, she said I couldn't have, because he had died suddenly of a heart attack in his early 40s a few weeks before.

After that I did and I didn't believe in ghosts. I was willing to believe it wasn't Dave if someone could convince me I made a mistake, but no one ever did. We were too close spatially, my eyesight was 20/20 then, this guy was very distinctive looking including his clothes and mannerisms. I was also willing to believe it was Dave's ghost, but no one ever managed to convince me to believe in an afterlife either, at least not one where people could still appear in this one.

My main objections were, first, that of all the people I knew who had died that I would have WANTED to see again, I never saw any of them: I barely knew Dave; and second, why did he choose to appear to me, but not speak to me? One friend who was a firm believer in ghosts had a pretty decent explanation for why he didn't speak--that he didn't appear TO ME specifically, he was hanging around his old workplace (he was a workaholic)--and also for why I saw him: I hadn't known he was dead so I couldn't filter it out as 'impossible.' This friend also pointed out that my reaction in the past to 'psychic' experiences had always been to say that was one gift I didn't want, not because it was scary or spooky but just because I have had a pretty challenging life just dealing in the known dimensions (same reason I never took any hallucinogens--well, that and my college friend who tried to fly out a third story window after reading Huxley's "Doors of Perception" and taking mescaline).

So, I did and I didn't believe I'd seen a ghost, for almost 30 years I was agnostic on it as I was on the whole subject of other realms of existence. I was willing to believe they existed and equally willing to believe they didn't.

After the truck incident, I began to believe there IS another dimension to reality. I just don't understand it. I would love to have my real father who died when I was a year old drop by for a chat, but he never has. Not even in my dreams. And I still don't know why a small group of people at that expressway entrance rated a first class lifesaving miracle. Unless there was a child in one of the cars who is destined for great things like Linda Hamilton's kid in the first Terminator.

I got snarked at here for my comments several articles ago about "magick" and my belief there is no such thing as 'white' magic(k), that it's ALL dangerous and demonic.

In addition to the computer problems I had after warning my cousin about the Potter books, after my posts on magic, I had a visit from a real demon...it lay on my back, weighing me down, and held my wrists out above my head. It had 10 fingers on each hand, with pointed dark nails. I alternated between invoking the name of Jesus and asking it what the point of its visit was since it didn't scare me and sure didn't seduce me: hardly an 'angel of light'. Then it turned into my ex-boyfriend in his underwear, apparently not recalling he and I had a lousy sex life. I punched it in the balls and it left. I sometimes get the impression that, like Dubya, demons are vicious but not actually very bright.

Your article about the 1890s airships was fascinating too--I just learned of them a few weeks ago from a friend into UFOlogy. My take on them however was to wonder if they were from our own future when we have mastered time travel, rather than demons. I would like to discuss this more with you, would you mind if I email you at the addy in your blog to continue this discussion? I'd also like to hear your take on my levitated truck experience--real angels, or demons, and if the latter, what was there motivation?

In Budd Hopkins' "Sight Unseen", he comments that visitors want to be remembered for some reason - they want to be noticed, to make a lifelong impression, and possibly to totally disorient and confuse. He describes aliens that masquerade as human job interviewers, Outback Steakhouse patrons, and perfume salesman (among other things) I'd say a talking raccoon fits the bill, too. Also - some places (especially high places and damp locations) attract and/or retain high strangeness for long periods of time: Scotland's Ben Macdhui mountain, Mount Shasta in the U.S., most of West Virginia, etc. Perhaps Mullis's cabin retreat was built in just such a place.It's possible these places are haunted by past events or they are HQs for otherworldly entities that strive to get our attention - maybe to exploit us.

Cassandra, the details of how they did it, who did it, and why they did it may not be something you'll ever know. The Others, whoever they may be, have their own ways with space and with time, and their ways are not ones we usually understand.

More important is this -- where does what you do know about this incident with the truck (and I mean _know_ rather than assume or guess) take you from here?

Does it change who you are and what you do? And that's an open question, not saying it should necessarily change you.

Maybe you can use this as a way of heightening awareness that perhaps you got a second chance. Maybe, if nothing else, you could be the one who takes on the city/county/state to reconfigure that very dangerous turn, and save some lives. You don't have to tell them the details of why you are interested in this, just do the work.

As for Dave the ghost, lore has it that ghosts are often those who don't quite realize they are dead, and Dave's sudden death might illustrate that.

We don't know why the dead sometimes contact us, why they pick who they do to reveal themselves to, and why they give the messages we think they give. Anybodythat says they have an explanation for that which explains all is a damned liar, or a fool.

It doesn't mean that whatever pattern of the dead remains intact and perceptible as a persona does or doesn't love people they loved in life. Or that they don't have ways of watching or hearing or sensing their loved ones.

We just don't know.

But what we do know, is that they don't always use words to contact, and the messages we get from them don't always have the return addresses we expect.

Where there is love, there is connectedness. And death doesn't sever that link, just transforms it.

Thank you too, Avalon, for some thought provoking questions and concepts.

When I was maybe 18 or 19 and had no particular reason to think the statement was true, I copied down in my journal the famous statement by JBS Haldane that the universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we CAN suppose. I suspect I liked that quote because I have always had a short attention span, and it would have been a great disappointment to me if I could have figured out the universe in a couple of years and been bored for the rest of my time on earth :D.

By the way, I drove on the expressway today and you know what? There's not just 2 overpasses, there are FOUR and they're on a gradual S curve so that when you come out of them you are facing approximately the same direction as before them; navigating them in a 'trance' might be a challenge, but dumping someone on the 'far' side of them would leave them a straight shot to the next intersection.

At one time I was very interested in the idea of things that disappear and reappear elsewhere, and I wondered if since ultimately we are all just electrical impulses anyway, electrons, if 'translocation' had to actually involve movement of the person/object, or if they just sort of winked out at one spot, as if their component electrons were bulbs on a marquee, and winked on elsewhere. Around the same time I had a dream in which I was told to walk through a wall. I was hesitant, not saying it was impossible but wanting to know HOW it was going to be possible. I was told that we're all made up of atoms that are mostly SPACE so if our atoms don't bump into the wall atoms, VOILA! I was warned however NOT to stop in the middle, to move right through. So I started walking, and sure enough felt a temptation to stop as I entered the wall but I didn't and I popped out on the other side. Of course the popular interpretation from my therapist, friends, even myself, at that time was that it was simply about deciding to work through problems and not stop when it gets difficult. Later I wasn't so sure that had I perfect faith I might not actually be able to walk through walls. Alas, I have not perfect faith.

What did that experience do to change my life? Nothing when it happened, but later in the year it was followed up by a couple of other arguably 'supernatural' events like a person I had only met once before to chat for 10 minutes in a cafe gave me $1000 I did not have to repay, and he turned out not to be an angel, but a very solid human being--and a venture capitalist. (He didn't give me the money for business reasons, which would have made sense--I was in a personal financial bind. There was nothing in the deal for him except feeling like a good person, which he was.)

I began to think perhaps there was some force in some other dimension that was making an effort to be nice to me. Having had a grudge against God all my life because of my father's death, I was a skeptically suspicious and cautiously grateful recipient; I was more willing to believe it was bait from the dark side. I'm still not sure. Unlike the optimistic little boy who was convinced there must be a puppy in the pile of poop, I'm always looking for the poop ;). I doubt anything but my father restored to life like Lazarus would reconcile me to the Christian God. Knowing my arms are too short to box with Him doesn't stop me from trying.

If you knew what my mother's family was like, the ones I got left with after my father died, you'd understand why I'm pissed. My father's own family told him not to marry my mother because HER family was crazy, but he went ahead and did it, then neglected his health (wouldn't see a doctor for stomach pain, said it was intestinal flu but it was a ruptured appendix) so he died, per my uncle, my mom's sister's husband. I'd like to forgive them all, and I've tried, but I can't. Hmm. Maybe that's why I never see my father's ghost, he's afraid I'd blast him good :D. Well, he deserves it, and not showing up to take it like a man means I think a whole lot less of him. As for God, He's God, right? He can do whatever He wants. But thanks to His own decision to give us free will, I don't have to like Him. Right?

Whether there is a God in the way many people think of God, and what "He" feels or thinks or does, are pretty big abstract questions. Even those of us who do feel there is intelligence permeating the Ground of Being don't agree on what part of the Unknowable we know and don't know.

I do know something of your anger at someone who died of a GI tract disorder that seeing a doctor earlier might have caught in time. I lost one of the people I loved most in the world because he didn't see a doctor soon enough when his colon was disintegrating.

So it's not just anger at God, but also anger at your mom's crazy family and at your dad.

Your dad isn't a man anymore, so he can't "take it like a man."

It's hard for an individual to heal from craziness, but it's even harder to heal when a whole family constellation is acting crazy.

Is the most important question "Who started it?" Or is it "Who can end it?"

Well, no. I want the anger and pain to be borne by the responsible parties, my mother and father. Now, the religion I was raised in, Roman Catholicism, tells me that if you screw the pooch during your life you will pay for it after death, for all eternity in hell if you're not sorry and in purgatory if you are. Hardly seems fair to me that while MY life still carries the scars--whether I CHOOSE to have them or not--of their mistakes they would fly up to heaven and have high tea with God, does it?

Or worse, if there is no God they're long dead, turned to dust, and will NEVER have to face the consequences of their actions or repent their selfish actions.

For awhile I was having Masses said for their souls, until I realized that the point wasn't to make things better for THEM--they'd had many chances to do that and blown them all--but to make things better for ME.

At the point where my life no longer is hobbled by the consequences of their selfishness, sure, I'll forgive them. Since I suffer from inherited incurable disease, of course, I may never be free of those consequences.

Or maybe you think a child owes it to a parent to forgive them for, say, playing the odds on something like Huntington's chorea by having a child who then gets it but when the time comes the child needs to be cared for the parent's buggered off to heaven?

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